City of Spades Read online

  ‘Yes. You saw? They stole my lighter.’

  ‘A Ronsons?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of course. Was Mr Ronson Lighter who took it. That is his professins: when he sees Ronson lighter, he muss steal him.’

  ‘And who are his friends?’

  ‘The Billy Whispers peoples. Gambian boys, real bad. Billy his self, and Jimmies Cannibals and Mister Ronson Lighter, this that robs you.’

  ‘What do they do for a living?’

  ‘Prey!’

  His eyes gleamed sympathetically and, I thought, with envy. Then he went on:

  ‘That is their seats over in him corners. This is the seats of all bad Asfrican boys where they go gather makin’ deals. No Asfrican boy who is not top London hustler go near their corners, and no Wess Indians dare go by never. Mister, if you have loot, or goods, or wishes they can prey on, please keep clear of him Billy Whispers and all his surrounding mens.’

  He told me this as one who reveals a precious, precarious State secret. Then he looked severe.

  ‘Those boys they sink I stupit – “Boos-a-man” [Bushman] they call me, becos I come out from my home in him interiors, not city folks like those wikit waterfronk boys …’ He ruminated, flashing his eyes about. ‘They sink I stupit because of no educasons. But [crescendo] my blood better than their blood! My father sieftan [chieftain]!’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes. I sief’s son.’

  Diffidence but enormous pride: as if making a huge joke that was no joke, as if calling on me to recognise a splendid truth even if incredible.

  ‘Then why do you leave your people and come here to England?’

  ‘I? Oh, to see these sights. To live. Also, to learn my instrumink.’

  ‘Your …’

  ‘My sassofone. I work stoke in him governmik boiler-room by nights, to get loot for lessons for my instrumink. Then, when my time come, I go home to fashinate my cousins with my tunes.’

  ‘And how are your studies progressing?’

  ‘Whass say?’

  ‘Are you mastering your instrument?’

  ‘Man, up till now is my instrumink who is most times mastering me. Ah! But lissen!’

  And we heard:

  ‘You leave your mother and your brother too,

  You leave the pretty wife you’re never faithful to,

  You cross the sea to find those streets that’s paved with gold,

  And all you find is Brixton cell that’s oh! so cold.’

  ‘Thass Lord Alissander! He always come playing here evening, hopin’ for sillins and publicitix.’

  He plucked at my arm and led me out to the corner of the street. Mr Lord Alexander was leaning against the pub wall, strumming and singing in the middle of a softly humming circle.

  ‘Give us some bad song now, man!’

  ‘Some little evil tune, Lord Alexander!’

  ‘Oh, no! No, no, not me in this respectable country …’

  ‘This little Miss Commercial Road she say to me,

  “I can’t spend much more time in your society.

  I know you keep me warmer than my white boy can do,

  But my mother fears her grandson may be black as you.”’

  There was laughter; but on the far side of the street, standing against the brick fence that lined the bombed-out site, were two figures in mackintoshes who were now joined by a tall police inspector with the shape of an expectant mother. The Bushman took my arm:

  ‘Lissen, man,’ he whispered, ‘I soot off now, that look to me like him Law be making his customary visicts. Come! We soot off to him Cosmikpolitan dansings, and find whass cookings there …’

  Looking back, we saw the three coppers sweeping on the group, which scattered; and then Lord Alexander being led off, the uniformed inspector carrying the guitar as if it was a truncheon.

  8

  A raid at the Cosmopolitan

  This Cosmopolitan dance hall is the nearest proximity I’ve seen yet in London to the gaiety and happiness back home.

  For the very moment I walked down the carpet stair, I could see, I could hear, I could smell the overflowing joys of all my people far below. And when I first got a spectacle of the crowded ballroom, oh, what a sight to make me glad! Everywhere us, with silly little white girls, hopping and skipping fit to die! Africans, West Indians, and coloured GIs all boxed up together with the cream of this London female rubbish!

  A weed peddler came up to me. ‘Hullo, hullo, man, you’re new,’ this too much smiling man said.

  I gave him my frown. ‘And what you want?’ I said.

  ‘Is what you want,’ he answered, and showed me his packet. ‘I’m the surest sure man in the business. You can call me Mr Peter Pay Paul.’

  I took it, opened it, eyed it, sniffed it. ‘If this is weed,’ I said, ‘I’m Sugar Ray Robinson.’

  His face looked full of pain. ‘Then you’s dissatisfied?’ and he tried to snatch the little packet back.

  I held it far. ‘What is your foolish game, Mr Peter Pay Paul? What is this evil stuff you peddle to poor strangers?’

  He glared at me hard; then smiling again, said, ‘Well, I see you’s a smart fellow, not rich in ignorance. So I tell you secretly. Is asthma cure I peddle to GIs.’

  ‘Tell me some more.’

  ‘This asthma cure, you see, is much like the weed to look at, but naturally is cheaper and of no effect. But GIs are so ignorant and anyway so high with liquor, that they buy it from me in large quantities.’

  ‘Well, I’m no GI, mister, nor ignorant, you’ll understand.’ And I pushed past him towards the edge of the dancing floor.

  And there, wearing dark glasses, and standing among the awaiting pouncers, who should I see but my dearest friend of schooldays in Lagos – Hamilton! ‘Hamilton!’ I cried out. ‘Hamilton Ashinowo, baddest bad boy of the whole mission school!’

  Round about he spun, peered, took off his dark glasses (Wow! how that man had been charging, his eyes closed up almost shut), then called out: ‘No! No! Is Johnny! Johnny, since when you arrive, my little boy?’ And he seized me and gabbled at me in our private tribal tongue.

  Hamilton, my dear friend at the mission school, had left it by expulsion two years before I came away when he was found by the Reverend Simpson selling palm wine at profitable prices from a canvas bag he kept hidden underneath his dormitory bed. Hamilton was the love and mock of all of us at school. Mock for his tall, wobbling figure, his huge teeth in his pale-pink gums, his arms that hung down to his knees like a chimpanzee, and for the celebrated frenzy dance of all his body when excited, that caused him to leap and break out in sharp cries of gasping joy. But loved by us all for his everywhere good nature to everyone, even those not at all deserving of it from him.

  ‘Villainous Hamilton!’ I cried out. ‘Let’s have a drink to celebrate this reunion.’

  ‘Man, in this Cosmopolitan is only coffees, ciders and Coca-Colas, but if you like we can cross the road over to the Moorhen.’

  ‘No, no, stay here and tell me all your activities since we meet. How did you get here, and what is your full present position?’

  ‘I came here, Johnny, on a merchant ship.’

  ‘As passenger? As crew?’

  ‘As stowaway. Then one month in their English jail, and I’m a free British citizen again.’

  ‘And how do you live on what?’

  ‘Ah, now, that …’ He smiled and wobbled. ‘Well, man, I hustle. If you ain’t got no loot from home, and you don’t like the work in the Jumble Post Office, or railways, for six pounds less taxes and insurances, then, man, you must hustle.’

  ‘And what is your particular hustling?’

  ‘Oh, Johnny, you ask such private questions! Tell me of you, now. You been here long?’

  ‘Some few day now.’

  ‘And you think you like this city?’

  ‘I think yes I do, but not my lodging. I’m in that Welfare hostel.’

  ‘Oh, no! That underpaid paradise! You enjoy it?�
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  ‘Mister, I’m moving out before the week is ended. Are rooms in town so very hard to find?’

  ‘They can be found, yes, though Jumbles that take Spade will rob you in their charge of rent …’

  ‘Aren’t there no Spades here that have houses?’

  ‘Oh, yes. They rob you even better, but they leave you free. I live in one such house myself.’

  ‘And that house is where?’

  ‘By Holloway. I live out there at times.’

  ‘At times?’

  ‘Man, I have several addresses. I keep them for various private reasons of convenience.’

  ‘Hamilton, all this is so mysterious to me.’

  ‘I tell you more later, man, far from these overhanging ears. Meantime if you leave your hostel, will you come and live with me if you prefer? The landlord is Mr Cole, an Ibo man. I pay two pounds the week which you can share.’

  ‘Immediately, Hamilton. I move into your house tonight.’

  By this time the Cosmopolitan was getting hotted up. And I was struck to notice that though the band was only Jumble imitation of our style, it was quite a hep combination, with some feel of the beat, not like those dreadful records of the English bands I’d heard back home which never can play slow, and never can play easy to the limbs. Out on the floor our boys were acting cool and crazy, letting their little girls do all the work as they twisted them around; or if any of our boys did break in a quick shuffle, the chicks were left gasping tied in hopeless knots. The English boys, of which a few were out there on the floor, all leapt around their partners like some bouncing peanuts, supposing they would show these easy Spades the genuine hot footwork of the jungle. To ask for partner, as I saw, all you must do was just walk up and grab. Though I did notice some polite student boys with spectacles who bowed and enquired, in Jumble style, for which they got refusal.

  Then I saw Billy Whispers’ Dorothy. She danced with a GI, dressed up sharp, with vaseline in his hair and graceful.

  ‘Hamilton,’ I said, ‘do you know a Bathurst boy called Whispers?’

  ‘That Billy? Who doesn’t know of him? Now heaven help that poor GI if Dorothy take him home.’

  ‘Is that Billy Whispers’ racket?’

  ‘One that he has, with robbery and violence, assisted by Ronson Lighter and by Jimmy Cannibal.’

  ‘Why they call that boxer that? He eat his mother?’

  ‘I expect not yet. But he tell his Jumble victims he was fed up on boiled missionary in his village. This news impress them, see, and wins their unlucky trust.’

  ‘Hamilton, hold my cigarette, I’m going to dance with her.’

  ‘Look after yourself then, Johnny, and don’t lose me from your view.’

  Dorothy’s GI was not a bit pleased to see me, but she cut all the ground out under his long feet by saying to me, with her English idea of the speech of a tough Brooklyn chick, ‘Why, hullo, feller. Never thought I’d see you again so soon.’

  ‘I’m like that bad penny, Dorothy. I always keep turning myself up.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask me to dance?’

  ‘Come on, then, I’ll spin you round a while.’

  But soon we circled far off to the quiet corner where the partners were wedged up close.

  ‘Does Billy know you’re here?’ she asked me.

  ‘Can’t say. Why? You belong to that man?’

  ‘I don’t belong to nobody, see?’ (This came out in her natural Brixton language – no more Brooklyn.) ‘I live with Billy Whispers, yes. But only so long as I want to. Me, I walk out just when I like.’

  ‘That’s not what I thought from how he acted to you there this afternoon. It seemed like he had you all wrapped up.’

  ‘Oh, did it!’

  ‘I’m glad it’s not so, Dorothy. Because Muriel and your mother’s getting worried about the influence of Billy on you.’

  She stopped dancing.

  ‘Oh, is she! My mother – that old cow: yes, I said “cow”! And Muriel, my good little sister! Do you know why she’s so good, Johnny? Because she’s deformed! She can’t do any better for herself. Didn’t you see her hand?’

  ‘I saw she had the glove on it …’

  ‘She’s only got three fingers on that hand.’

  ‘She had some accident?’

  ‘No. She was deformed from birth.’

  ‘Which fingers has she missing?’

  ‘The end ones. I tell her it means she’ll never get married, if she can’t wear a wedding ring …’

  ‘Fingers aren’t everything on a body, Dorothy.’

  ‘No, but they come in handy, don’t they?’

  ‘She’s got a pretty figure, and a happier smile than you.’

  ‘Muriel? She’s never been known to smile since she was born.’

  She put her arms round my neck and hung on me.

  ‘What about your brother Arthur, Dorothy? When is he coming out?’

  ‘It was six months he got, so it should be any time now, with the remission. But me, I don’t have anything to do with him. I don’t like these half white, half Africans.’

  ‘You might have one yourself, the way you’re living.’

  ‘Are you kidding? I’d get rid of it. Anyway, I’m going to have my ovaries removed.’

  ‘That’ll be nice and comfortable.’

  We circled round a bit, and I held her off from taking any too great liberty. But she pressed up close and said to me, ‘Why don’t you ask me out to tea one day, Johnny?’

  ‘Oh, I drink coffee.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Don’t rush me off my feet, now, Dorothy. Why you not wait until I make the offer?’

  ‘Oh, if that’s how you feel …’ And she walked straight out of my arms. I watched her fine figure, which certainly gave you the appetite, as she vanished from my view.

  As I was strolling back to look for Hamilton, who should I see, sitting at a table, but this unusual couple: a rough-looking jungle boy, who I thought by his cheek-marks might be of the Munshi tribe, and with him who else but the Welfare Office gentleman, Mr Montgomery Pew. Oh-ho! I thought. What can this be?

  His long body was wrapped all round the table legs, his hungry face held up by both his hands, and his sad eyes were shooting round the room like trying to find something they could rest on with any comfort.

  ‘Why, Mr Pew!’ I said to him. ‘You visiting this wicked spot to see if I obey your wise advice to me?’

  ‘Why, Mr Fortune!’ he cried back, ‘do come and have a glass of this disgusting lemonade. Here is a friend of mine – Mr Bushman, I much regret I don’t know your full name.’

  I said a few words to this Bushman in his own Munshi tongue, which is one of the four African languages I know fluently. I said I had business to discuss with Mr Pew, and as for him, would he please cut out and hunt some crocodiles? But he answered me in his terrible style of English.

  ‘If you spiks to me insolting,’ he said, ‘be very careful or I soot you.’

  ‘What you shoot me with, man?’

  This puzzled him one moment, but he said, ‘I will soot you with my amonisions.’

  I laughed at the Bushman’s face.

  ‘This gentleman,’ said Mr Pew, ‘is a chieftain’s son, and as such must be treated with respect. Besides which he’s been most kind and obliging to me in all manner of ways.’

  I saw Mr Pew was high – real gone.

  ‘Blow now, you chieftain’s son,’ I said to him. ‘Chief means no nothing now to any educated Africa man.’

  ‘Wash out for youself,’ the Bushman said to me, ‘or one day I take an’ soot you.’ But he got up, and slowly he slide away.

  Mr Pew waved after him, then turned to me and said, ‘A delightful personality. To tell you the truth, I find this place quite gripping. An Elizabethan fragment come to life in our regimented world.’

  No sense in that bit, so I said to him, ‘Don’t tell me this is your first visit here.’

  ‘My dear Fortune, ye
s, it is. Believe it or not, I’ve only been attached to the Welfare Office a few days.’

  ‘And already you give good advice to Africans! Well, well. How like an Englishman, if I may say.’

  ‘But it’s my job, my duty, Mr Fortune!’

  ‘This “Mr Fortune”! Can’t you call me Johnny like the whole world do?’

  ‘And I’m Montgomery.’ He held out his hand. ‘But not, please, ever “Monty”, under any circumstances.’

  ‘If you say so, Montgomery. And now you’ll be looking after colonial people’s welfare?’

  ‘In my small way, I hope so. I know nothing about you all, Johnny, but I like your people …’

  ‘We never trust a man who tells us that.’

  ‘Oh, no? No?’

  ‘We know in five seconds if you like us without you say so. Those who say they like us most usually do not.’

  This Montgomery now grasped my arm in the most serious way. ‘Well, even if I mustn’t say I like you, I do,’ he told me.

  ‘Oh, that’s all right, then.’ And I smiled my best high-grade smile.

  It was fortunate for us that Hamilton came over at this moment to warn me that some trouble was expected.

  ‘Johnny, you must come with me, there’s plain-clothes Law mustering up outside.’ And then in our language: ‘Who is this white?’

  ‘Not dangerous, I think. What’s cooking?’

  ‘GIs have stated that their overcoats have been robbed them from the cloakroom. Naturally, our boys like those nice long blue nylon weatherproofs, and do these Americans expect their entertainment here for nothing? Always causing argument and disturbances. I not surprised those Yankee whites will string them up on trees.’

  ‘Now, Hamilton.’

  ‘If they keep on with their foolish agitations, this nice place will soon be closed by public opinion. Come, now. Let we buy some VP wine before the closing, and me I’ll take you to an Indian restaurant called Fakir for rice and clean cooked chicken, not like that Jumble food, all grease.’

  But just then some twenty Law appeared at the entrance steps, the band stopped, and a large cop went over to the mike and shouted: ‘All stay where you are for questioning. No one moves.’